Many people fidget as a result of nervous energy, stress, agitation, and/or boredom. Others have trouble concentrating and need to move to release energy. Still other studies have shown that fidgeting helps relieve cognitive load by offloading some of the load to movement, thereby freeing up resources to concentrate on a mental process.
Fidgeting is often manifested by playing with one's fingers, hair, jewelry or item of clothing. Alternatively, a person might play with coffee cups, labels on bottles, candy wrappers, paper clips and the like. Still others may click on a retractable pen. These actions may distract others, for example in a classroom or a meeting. However, in many cases, a person who is restrained against fidgeting may not be able to fully concentrate and/or fully absorb what is being said, read or viewed in a particular activity. Many people therefore find they are able to more fully concentrate on a speaker, text they are reading, video they are watching or text they are writing, by fidgeting.
One particularly common type of fidgeting is pen clicking, where a person repeatedly clicks a retractable pen, oftentimes without realizing he/she is doing so. This often is quite distracting for people who are in the same room or nearby.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,205,863 (Rhoades) is one of the earliest disclosures of a retractable pen. A cam body has a plurality of spaced cam surfaces and means coacting with a depressible member and sequentially traversing the cam surfaces to positively rotate the writing unit unidirectionally to successive rotation point-projected positions on successive operation of the depressible member. In the meantime, a spring is used to urge a writing unit rearwardly.
A magnetic mechanical pencil for 2 mm lead was disclosed in a KICKSTARTER™ campaign launched in 2016 under the project name “MAGNO | The World's First Magnetically Controlled Pencil.” The rear of the pencil lead is secured at one end in a plastic sleeve connected to a magnet, within an aluminum housing. The front end of the pencil lead is secured at a desired position by jaws of a brass collet. The end tip of the housing is rotated to open or loosen the jaws of a brass collet to allow a marking end of a lead to extend from the front of the mechanical pencil. A ferrous sleeve located around the outside of the housing slides by hand to determine the length of lead extending through the brass collet. The lead is then secured in place by rotating the tip end to tighten the collet around the lead.
The MAGNO™ pencil design appears to be limited to 2 mm lead pencils, since smaller diameter pencil leads tend to be shorter in length and, furthermore, much smaller in diameter, for example 0.5 mm or 0.7 mm. Accordingly, the smaller, thinner leads would tend to break in the type of collet shown in the MAGNO™ disclosure. As well, the shorter lifespan of a smaller diameter and shorter lead would require frequent reloading of each individual lead in the sleeve and magnet assembly. Further, the extension and retraction of a retractable ink cartridge has a different type of challenge not addressed by the MAGNO™ pencil design.
There is a need for a retractable writing instrument that provides a different operating mechanism allows for is sufficiently versatile to allow different types of fidgeting movements. There is also a need for a writing instrument that allows a user to either fidget or readily disengage from fidgeting while using the pen. There is also a need for a writing instrument having a fidgeting component that can provide a secondary function.